Successful launch for the 2015 Wellington Community Justice Project
Back row (L–R): Gabrielle Groube, Mariah Hori te Pa, Tom Nelson, Yousuf Ahmad;
Middle row (L–R): Jasmine Harding, Mollie Mattich, Fady Girgis, Rebecca McMenamin
Front row (L–R): Nathalie Harrington, Tina Chen-Xu, Asaph Verner, Fayez Shahbaz.
This month, the Wellington Community Justice Project held its 2015 Launch, recruiting students for an exciting year of projects ahead.
The Wellington Community Justice Project is an extra-curricular student-led society—for second-year law students and above—which aims to improve access to justice and legal services in the community, and to provide law students with an opportunity to gain practical legal experience.
The project consists of four specialist teams: Human Rights, Education, Advocacy and Law Reform. Each year, the teams run three or four different projects which students volunteer to be a part of.
Last year, the Education team in conjunction with Community Law Wellington, visited high schools, alternative education providers and university halls of residence around Wellington as part of their Rights Education Project. The purpose of the visits was to deliver modules teaching teenagers about their various legal rights around tenancy, drugs and alcohol, sex and consent, and more. The team also hopes to develop a cyber-safety module about what rights teenagers have on the internet.
The group also works very closely with Community Law Wellington, offering support with all types of tasks from note-taking to giving advice and support.
This year joint Student Directors Nathalie Harrington and Fayez Shahbaz are looking forward to an action-packed year, after a fantastic response to their launch which saw over 200 student volunteers sign up—a significant increase from last year.
Their guest speaker at the launch event was human rights lawyer Claire Achmad, who has worked as an in-house counsel for the New Zealand government, as a Child Rights and Research and Advocacy Officer for UNICEF, and as a Senior Advisor to the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and Executive Director of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission.
The Human Rights team are currently contributing to a Harvard John F Kennedy School of Government research project evaluating the global status of violence against women. More information about this project will be in the April issue of Faculty News.